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>Real victory in a traditional war against Russia is unattainable.

This is very wrong. Anything is possible, it's just a matter of political will.

The most likely scenario is russia is pushed to the brink and collapses internally like 1917 and 1990. Then Russia balkanizes along ethnic lines, like 1917 and 1990.

Unfortunately Russia didn’t balkanize in 1990. The largest Soviet republic became the Russian Federation and kept its borders.

The world today would be a much safer place if 1990 Russia had split into about six independent states, each comparable to Kazakhstan or Ukraine. Hopefully that will eventually happen when Putin is gone. Imperial Russia should cease to exist like imperial Austria did. It has been a great source of misery throughout the centuries.

The republics that gained independence broke free from the Russian empire. Several wars also broke out as a result including transnistria, Georgia and Chechnya.

Western Europe still has a massive manpower advantage, before you even look at investment and . If things develop to the level where the "comfortable city dwellers" in Europe is truly threatened I don't see Russia as being anywhere near the victor (though you're correct that in that case there won't be a "victor" so much "Might Lose A Little Less"). But the goal is to push up to that limit but no beyond, at least for now.

I don't think many people are actually nationalistic zealots who want to eliminate other countries so long as theirs is technically still existent, as even a king of ashes won't have a great life compared to a mid-range billionaire today.

> a megalomaniac dictator with nukes

I'm not alone in believing that this alone is reason enough to risk everything. A threat to freedom anywhere is a threat to freedom everywhere.

That is a nice slogan but the “everything” is an estimated 5 billion deaths globally as direct and indirect result of a large scale nuclear exchange between Russia and “The West”. Putin is going to get old and die and Russia will likely look very different in 50, 100, 250 years. Other than the permanent enslavement of the human race, I can’t see any goal worth destroying all of human civilization and killing the majority of the people on the planet.

> And it's not like Europe isn't fighting back. European intelligence has been deep inside Russian networks since before the first invasion of Ukraine. From the European side, the invasion of Ukraine is a proxy war, with billions of euros spent on fighting Russia, while to Russia the war is a normal invasion with Russian (and now North Korean) troops on the ground.

This is flatly wrong and gives far too much credit to Europe. The US had to shake Europe and Ukraine awake to the impending invasion of Ukraine. And I say this as an EU citizen.